


Comfort In Unexpected Places

by ShadowHaloedAngel



Series: One Knight Stands [1]
Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic (Video Game)
Genre: Comfort Sex, Comfort/Angst, Consular as Outlander, Coping Mechanisms, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Friends With Benefits, No Strings Attached, cantina fic, mentions of polyamory, references to past abusive situations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-14
Updated: 2019-06-14
Packaged: 2020-05-07 18:31:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19215124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShadowHaloedAngel/pseuds/ShadowHaloedAngel
Summary: At some point during the five years searching for the Outlander, Senya and Lana find themselves in a cantina on Tatooine, chasing down yet more leads that come to nothing. They have a surprising amount in common, and if there is comfort to be found in falling into each other's beds in the face of certain death... well, there are worse ways to handle it.





	Comfort In Unexpected Places

The Tookreek Cantina. It wasn't the first cantina she'd been to, not by a long shot. Of course, before she'd gotten involved with this group of... she wasn't even sure what to call them in her mind really. She still categorised them as rebels, but then... well, she was one of them now. Revolutionaries, perhaps? She rather got the feeling that none of them would like those descriptions much. They were certainly interesting people though. 

She sat by the bar and watched as the tall blonde Sith with golden eyes talked with the SIS agent. She wasn't party to this particular conversation. It was still early days and Lana didn't quite trust her yet. Senya could understand that. For her part she wasn't entirely sure she trusted either of them, but she was keeping her mouth shut for now. They had common goals, after all, even if they still ached in her heart. She knew well enough that things done could not be undone, and it was necessary to move forward. She could not undo the mistakes of her past that had led to this, but she could atone for them. 

Sometimes she still missed Valkorion. Not the man the Outlander had killed, but the man she had fallen in love with. She wasn't entirely convinced he was gone. Her connection to him, and her sensitivity to the Force both told her that there was more to it somehow. Of course, at times she wasn't sure whether it was that, or just knowing that he was a slippery bastard who she would put nothing past at all. There had still been a time when they had been happy, when she had been happy... but she was hardly likely to find a sympathetic audience for that. 

So this was Tatooine... she'd seen it before of course, on some of the patrols that had kept her away from her sons, kept her occupied at the fringes of wild space while she watched them grow up through public holovids and wondered about her daughter. She'd never exactly interacted with it before, though. Fraternisation with the locals wasn't really something Knights did - when she had still been a Knight. She had been proud of that title, once.

The conversation ended and Theron Shan left while Lana crossed back over to the stool next to Senya and ordered another drink, replacing Senya's own along with it. His name was supposedly significant, although she hadn't been able to turn up anything about him in the Zakuulan intelligence files. Changing her allegiance had certainly changed the way she viewed the galaxy. The Zakuulan perspective was narrow, dismissing the Sith, the Jedi, and everything that went with them, Republic and Empire, as lesser. Uninteresting. Worthy of contempt, or at most, amusement. There were entire major figures in galactic history on both sides that she knew nothing about and remedying that was proving both important and challenging. 

She took a glance at Lana's fresh glass to gauge her mood. It was bigger, half-full of something dark and strong. She could practically sense the alcohol evaporating from it from here, but Senya decided that politeness forbore mentioning it. Besides, she was all too familiar with the expression on Lana's face, and knew that interference, even well-meaning interference would be counter-productive. Instead she took a sip of her own drink and let the spirit burn a merry path down to her stomach. 

"...Any news?"

Her voice was pitched to be light, undemanding, casual. The kind of tone appropriate for a cantina like this. She already knew the answer from the expression on the younger woman's face, but it was still polite to ask. 

"Nothing good. Arcann is tightening his hold on occupied planets and demanding greater tribute. There was a massacre on Dantooine recently to prove some kind of point, a whole colony of pastoral settlers wiped out because he thought the Jedi were re-establishing their old outpost there as a bridgehead for mounting some kind of resistance against him."

"Any news of the Outlander?"

Lana shook her head, glaring at the bar so hard Senya was almost surprised it didn't burst into flames from sheer embarrassment. She might not have understood the dichotomy of the Sith and the Jedi, but she didn't need to to know that Lana Beniko was a powerful Force-user indeed. 

"...I'm sorry."

"I know she's alive. I know it. I can feel it in the Force. Everyone felt it when Valkorion died. Plenty felt when he killed Darth Marr. I felt no such ripple for Aloomma. I know she is alive somewhere, but I can't find her. I know Arcann had her frozen in carbonite and dragged off, but who is to say where she is now in all the wealth and glory that is Zakuul."

Senya can't quite bring herself to mind the bitterness in Lana's tone. Instead, she drains her glass and reaches for the other woman's hand, covering it with her own until Lana looks up, feeling her heart ache a little at how lost those amber eyes are, because Lana Beniko has the greatest self control Senya has ever seen. 

"...She is there. And we will find her."

Privately she might have her doubts about whether this woman, this Jedi really might be everything Lana claims, but Lana Beniko is not the kind of woman to exaggerate anyone's abilities, no matter how deeply she might love them. The stories she's heard give Senya at least a little hope that, even if the Outlander cannot beat Arcann as she beat Valkorion, she might distract him enough to buy breathing space for the Republic and the Empire to pull themselves together. It's obvious that the old alliances are holding true, and that the old enmities have a still tighter hold on the galactic fabric, but part of the reason the Empire and the Republic persist in attacking each other in the face of Zakuul is that they believe each other to be weak, and Zakuul to be unbeatable. If Lana's Outlander can change that, can once more leave Zakuul with egg on their face, as it were, then it might be enough to unite the rest of the galaxy against them, even temporarily. At least, that is what Lana believes. 

"You know, you might be the only person with an idea of how it feels. This is more than personal, of course it is, and I can separate personal from decisions for the good of the galaxy. I have always been able to do that, and you understand what it requires to have that kind of thinking. You also understand how it feels to miss the one you love."

Senya nodded, a bittersweet smile on her lips. 

"Yes. I do. The circumstances of my separation were very different, but I can understand, at least a little."

"It's so... lonely. That's the worst of it. Aside from the constant fear and almost certain death... I suppose a certain sense of fatalism is inevitable really, though I couldn't tell you when I developed it. I always felt with her I could face anything. I did face anything. We faced... a lot together. When we first met... there was no reason for us to... we were on opposite sides, we had so little in common, but big threats can so often result in unlikely alliances."

Lana's lips quirked a little in a smile that didn't reach her eyes and she nodded to the Rodian behind the bar to refill her drink and took another deep draught. She sighed. 

"Being a Sith, being part of the Empire... there is such an expectation to conform, to follow rules and obey authority and not to question. Learning is encouraged, but only... within parameters. For the most part I kept my head down, I... well, I had a reputation, I rose in the ranks, but the best way to rise in the ranks of the Sith is without drawing a great deal of attention. My first acts of rebellion were forming a most unlikely alliance when I believed the Empire to be in danger at the hands of a man I trusted, a man who had been my mentor. Even then the Empire was at the heart of my choices, and if you had cut me open then you would have found it through the very heart of me. Since then... the things we do, the people we meet... they change us. And now... I have such control, because it has been essential to my survival, to everything I have done to bring me this far, everything I have done to keep the galaxy and there are times... when I resent it. But the consequences of letting it slip... There is nothing I can drink that will make it go away, nothing that will numb the pain where it feels like my heart is ripped in two. It's not enough to stop me, because I refuse to surrender, to bow the knee to the likes of Arcann. If I die after we are reunited... perhaps that will be different, but separately? No. As it is, there is a constant battle I wage with myself on top of the war we are all engaged in, a battle to keep myself in check, to remind myself that I have someone to return to who will need me intact, but as the days continue to go by there is nothing to cover that scar that stops it getting ripped open all over again time after time."

Senya nodded, her hand still covering Lana's as the other woman took another swallow of the spirit, setting her now empty glass back down on the bar. It felt like progress that she didn't instantly nod to the Rodian again for another refill. Instead, she looked up, and Senya found that the intensity of those eyes took her breath away so close up. 

"Did you have many lovers, other than Valkorion? I often wonder. I suppose with the Knights being somewhere between the Jedi and the Sith it's only natural to be curious, since it's such a polarising issue."

Senya paused, taking a moment to choose her next words carefully. 

"...Within the Knights... I suppose much like any other military, fraternisation was officially against the rules, but usually a blind eye was turned. Sometimes comfort needs to be found wherever it can be. When I was part of the Emperor's guard, no. And never when I was with Valkorion. After that... I took posts which took me as far away from Zakuul and my family as possible. I couldn't face him. I couldn't face what he had done to my children. I couldn't face... their rejection. Sometimes then... it felt like a betrayal, every time, before and after, but... during it was a few hours of being... someone else, a few hours of being... not even desired, but the contact I spent so much time trying to avoid and reject... There was never anyone... consistent."

Lana nodded, still watching her, intent in a way Senya hadn't seen before, and it sent a bit of a thrill down her spine. She could understand it on a very real level, that need for comfort. 

"What about the Sith? Or the Jedi?"

"The Sith embrace passion in all its forms. Affairs are commonplace, many Sith have multiple partners and little to no loyalty to any of them. Others might have multiple lovers, but those they are loyal to for years. Monogamy isn't entirely non-existent, but it is rare. The Jedi on the other hand reject passion in all its forms. They don't sully themselves with physical relations, at least officially, and emotions, lust, love, jealousy... they go against the Jedi code."

"So I suppose that makes your relationship with The Outlander even more unusual."

"Please. She's more than just The Outlander. She wasn't an Outlander anywhere but Zakuul. She has a name."

"Of course. I'm sorry. Aloomma. She must have been... she must be very special."

"She is," Lana's eyes were blazing and her expression was fierce, but it softened after a moment, "...She is. Thank you."

"Of course."

The laugh that escaped the other woman was slightly bitter.

"I lost two lovers to your husband. I hold no enmity with you for it, but I hope you understand that I will live until I see everything he built, and his toxic hold on the galaxy broken."

Senya watched her for a moment, then nodded slowly, her head unbowed as she gazed into those hypnotic irises, like sunshine, her voice carefully even.

"...I understand. And I am sorry for your losses."

"He cost you a great deal too."

"He did."

Lana looked back at the shelves of spirits behind the bar, staring at them unseeing for a long moment before she glanced to Senya once more. 

"...I'll be honest, I think I've found all the comfort I'm going to find here for the night. And you?"

Senya watched her for a long moment, then nodded, draining her glass and moving to stand. 

"I think so too. Perhaps we should see if there might be any comfort to be found elsewhere?"

Lana's eyes burned like lava as she smiled, just a little, watching Senya sidelong under her lashes. 

"...You know, I think there just might be."

**Author's Note:**

> "I do not like Tatooine. I do like saying Tatooine." -- Theron Shan


End file.
